It is often desirable that electrical connector assemblies for mounting on printed circuit boards be of low profile, that is, upstand only a small distance above the surface of the printed circuit board, to permit a plurality of printed circuit boards to be closely spaced together in compact electronic equipment.
A known electrical connector assembly for mounting on a printed circuit board, comprises a post header including a row of post contacts fixed in a first insulating housing with one end of each post contact extending out of the housing for receipt in a hole in the printed circuit board, and a female connector including a corresponding row of female contacts fixed in a second insulating housing and for mating with the other ends of the post contacts when the female connector and the post header are mated.
In this known assembly the post contacts are rigid and are gripped by cantilever or beam spring portions of resilient female contacts.
However, it is very difficult in practice to manufacture economically female contacts with a height of below 10 mm. If the female contacts are simple fork contacts, a reduction in their height achieved by a reduction in the length of the fork arms would result in an increase in stiffness of the arms which would cause an undesirably high insertion force on mating with a post contact.
A further disadvantage of the known connector assembly is that a wall of the post header housing through which the post contacts extend must be relatively thick to provide sufficient support for the post contacts to resist deflection thereof during mating. This thickness contributes to the overall height of the assembly as the female contacts can engage only those portions of the post contacts extending above the wall surface.